Fic Post: Structural Integrity, Chapter 4
Oct. 8th, 2011 01:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
unlettyrdeBack to Chapter Three
***
Chapter Four: A Step Upon the Stair
It was a Friday night in early January. Joanna had just finished a long shift at the clinic, and she came home to find Savitri intent on her computer. She got no more than an abstracted wave as she shrugged off her coat, which meant work. Something sensitive, no doubt. Jo hoped she wouldn’t learn the details in tomorrow’s headlines.
It had been a long week, the sort that left you drained without any associated sense of accomplishment. Jo hated that. Her neck and shoulders were tense from too many hours at a desk, she’d resorted to the cane more days than not, and her hand tremor was back for no good reason at all.
Which left only one question: tea, wine, or something that would smart as it went down? She was saved the decision when her mobile started buzzing. She glanced at the screen and was smiling even as she hit Accept. “Detective Inspector, I believe this is what’s known among the younger generation as a ‘booty call’.”
Savitri glanced up from her laptop, amused. Lestrade’s voice was dry to the point of flatness, but Jo put that down to poor reception. “Sorry to disappoint. I just wanted—”
“We haven’t spoken in a month and a half and now you ring at this hour on a weekend? You can’t tell me you have noble intentions. Give me twenty minutes.”
“Joanna.” This stopped her in her tracks. He hadn’t called her that in almost two years. “Tuesday afternoon, we had an anonymous tip.”
“And?” Her throat was dry.
“And it paid off. We’ve got Sebastian Moran in custody now.”
She swallowed. “What are you charging him with?”
“Three counts of homicide, so far. Paul Griffiths and Roberta Anderson—I’m sure you remember them—and another case, a shooting in Bath a few years back. There’s a money trail on that one. We can link it straight to Moriarty.”
“And to Moran?”
“Well, there’s the rub. Everything we have on him is circumstantial. But I’m what you’d call cautiously optimistic.”
She didn’t—couldn’t—say anything, just stood there in the middle of the sitting room until Savitri started looking concerned. “Good,” Jo said inanely. “That’s good. Do you need—”
“You never had a thing to do with him,” he said at once. “We won’t need you. Unless you’ve remembered something else…?”
“Sherlock gave me his name,” she said. “She told me it was him.”
“Which won’t do us any good in court without her evidence to back it up. Don’t worry, though. We’ve got months to sort things out before this comes to trial.”
“Right,” Jo said. “Right. That’s fine, then.” She rubbed her hand up and down her thigh, massaging the sore muscle underneath, and she tried to think. “Has anyone told his sister?”
“What do you know about her?”
“That she exists, which you told me. And—I met her once.”
“Jo.” She tried to read either exasperation or concern in that, but she came up dry. He just sounded tired. “This isn’t your job. You’re not Sherlock.”
All this time, and that name still twisted something in her gut. “You don’t need to tell me that.”
“So leave it to us. Last thing I need—the very last thing—is you running about in back alleys while I’ve got an investigation on.”
That hardly described her visit to Sabine Moran, but she conceded the point. “All right. I promise. Just don’t bollocks this up.”
“I don’t need you to tell me how to do my job.”
“I know. I’m sorry. You managed Owens and Kempe without me, and I was glad to see them put away—but Moran shot Harry.” The numb shock had passed, and now the words came tumbling out. “He killed two people in my place and then he shot my sister.”
“I remember.”
“I want to see him, Lestrade.” She was fairly certain she hadn’t meant to say that. “I want to see him.”
“Are you out of your mind?” he demanded. “I said leave it to us! The best thing you can do is sit back and wait.”
“Like hell.”
“Joanna, fair warning’s all I can give you. I’ll phone you when there’s more news.” And he hung up.
She laid the phone down and looked up at Savitri, who had got to her feet by then and was watching Jo with a mixture of alarm and cool, professional assessment. It was a rare reminder of what this woman did for a living.
She smiled. Judging by Savitri’s stance, it was not reassuring.
“I want you to talk to your boss,” Jo said. “I need a favour.”
***
It wasn’t as though she liked the idea of running up a debt with Mycroft Holmes, but she had to admit the man got results. Early Monday morning she was ushered into a holding cell. There were no witnesses, and she’d been promised privacy from the Met’s surveillance. It was understood that both the cell’s occupants would emerge in the same physical condition as they’d entered it, but beyond that she’d been given no restrictions.
She almost regretted that. The urgent fury that had overtaken her at Lestrade’s news had been far too like the unthinking certainty that had once led her to draw a gun on an unarmed man. Phil Sutton hadn’t had a thing to do with Moriarty, and Sherlock had been there to tell her so, but in this case Jo thought it was just as well she no longer had the gun.
He sat with his arms folded, hands tucked away under his elbows in a pose that would have seemed defensive if he hadn’t had the trick of owning whatever space he was in. Despite a gaunt face scored with lines of pain and hard use, he was clean-shaven and neat, his grey and thinning hair cropped close. There was something of his sister in the jaw and aggressive nose. His blue eyes were certainly a family trait. They tracked her with calm curiosity, lingering on the cane and the tremor. He had a hunter’s eyes, Jo thought. She’d seen that look before. In the mirror, most frequently.
She suppressed a shudder and limped stiffly to sit down opposite him. The interrogation table between them was just a formality, a prop demanded by procedure. There were no real buffers here. This was the end of it all.
“Do you know who I am?” she asked, distantly glad that she could keep an even tone.
“Dr Watson, I presume. You’re the reason I’m here.”
“Am I?” Was he going to confess?
“I hear you’ve been telling the police all about me,” he said. “You’ve got quite a lot to say about a man you’ve never met.”
“I met your sister,” Jo said. “She’s told me all about you.”
“I doubt it. Never did meet yours, did I?”
“Depends on your definition, I suppose.”
He smiled. “I imagine it does. Come to gloat, have you? They won’t convict me.”
“We’ve got you, Moran.”
“You have my military record and the word of Sherlock Holmes,” he said, “and I don’t see her taking the witness stand.” His mouth curled, and he looked at Jo as though they were sharing an excellent joke.
She’d spent years swallowing rage and grief in the best military tradition, but now they both came boiling up. “Don’t say her name,” she hissed. “Don’t you dare.”
“Oh, I dare. She can’t touch me.”
“She did all she needed to. It’s been a long time since you’ve had Moriarty at your back. Your ground support’s been routed, Colonel. It’s time to surrender. How many other bodies do you think they’ll turn up, now they’re really looking?”
“Sonia Ginzberg’s,” he said. “How about hers?”
With time, that accusation had lost its edge. She ignored it. “Three murders so far. I’ll see they charge you for Sherlock’s, too.”
He laughed. Had she said something funny? “You’re barking up the wrong tree there, Watson, if you think they’ll make that case. I know for a fact they never pulled a bullet out of her. That’s one body they’ll never turn up.” She frowned in confusion, and those eyes grew keener. “Or don’t you know?”
“Know what?” Jo said sharply. “Know what Jim Ryder did to her? Of course I do. But Mycroft’s people spotted you in Bern, you know. You were there. Even if they can’t prove you made it to the Falls—”
“Good God,” he said. “You really don’t know, do you? What do think I’ve been doing since then?”
“Running. And shooting more people, I expect.”
He was still smiling. “Watson, this is the best thing I’ve heard in years. Are you ever in for it. You’re dead wrong. About everything, not least my chances of walking away from this scot-free.”
“I doubt it,” she said. He was trying to twist her, to catch her off guard, but she wouldn’t let him. Oh, to have met him with a gun in her hand. Pity the days of duelling were over; she’d love to find out which of them was the better shot at fifty paces. “We have you.”
“You really don’t. I haven’t shot a man since I was discharged.” She laughed. He sneered right back. “Don’t believe me, Doctor?” He lifted both his hands and laid them flat on the table.
She’d read enough of his service record to know it had been heavily abridged before it arrived in her hands, but the medical details had been even barer of real data than the rest. There’d been no x-rays, no photographs, no surgeon’s reports, and she hadn’t known the nature of his wound. Now it was all too apparent. The index and middle finger of his right hand had been shorn right off, and all that remained of the other fingers was a stub ending at the first knuckle. The left was in somewhat better condition, but even there she saw a knot of scar tissue, and the fingers were bent at anatomically unlikely angles.
“What’s your diagnosis?” The dismay must have been plain on her face, because he was watching her with all the satisfaction of a man who’d hit his mark. “Munitions explosion. You know, all they fed the Op Granby troops was chicken in brown sauce. Haven’t eaten it since. Just after it happened, I remember looking down at these and thinking, Chicken in brown sauce, that’s just it…you remember the smell, Watson.”
She sucked in air. “You could still fire.”
He raised his right hand and waggled the stubs at her. “My dominant, this one. And the left’s a bloody mess, too.”
“That doesn’t mean you couldn’t. It’s not proof.”
“These bumbling Yarders have just received copies of my medical records at discharge, complete with x-rays that make my left phalanges look like matchsticks and a surgeon’s prognosis saying I’ll never fire a weapon again. Griffiths was shot through his office window from across a street. With a handgun.” He looked down at his hands, flexing them carefully. Then he looked back up at her. “Could you have done it with these, Major?”
He knew about Jefferson Hope, oh yes. He had killed Paul Griffiths and Roberta Anderson, and he’d tried to kill Harry and had a hand in Sherlock’s death. She wouldn’t let him get out of it. “I’ve seen more miraculous recoveries in my time. With your eye, with practise and therapy and effort, your left hand could still make that shot.”
Moran leant in. His breath smelled of toothpaste, fresh and clean, and his eyes were twin bayonets. “As one gimp to another, Watson, how’s it feel when someone tells you you could get over it if you’d just try harder?”
She hit him. Not well, and not nearly hard enough. She might have done more damage if she’d angled her fist better, and the leverage from across the table was all wrong, but his chair rocked back with a satisfying clang.
He was laughing even before he’d uncrossed his eyes. “I almost wish I planned to stick around, Watson!” he shouted as she turned her back. “You’ve got no bloody idea what’s headed your way.”
She slammed the door behind her. Her hand was going to bruise, but it was her leg that hurt.
***
She went straight from there to Holmes’ office. The man hadn’t warned her. He should have warned her.
Mycroft smiled—actually smiled!—as she came in. Physically, he hadn’t changed much since she’d last seen him. Hair a little thinner, she thought. “How can I be of service?”
“He’s lying,” she said without preamble. He didn’t bother to pretend at confusion. “You know he’s lying. Those x-rays are forged, or he recovered better than expected, or something, and he killed them, but he’s going to get off. You can stop it happening.”
“So can you.”
“I can?” She laughed, a short huff of disbelief. “What sort of pull do you imagine I’ve got?”
“I don’t mean political influence. Go to Detective Inspector Lestrade and tell him to put you on the stand. Tell him exactly what Sonia Ginzberg said about Sebastian Moran. Tell him which names you overheard during that telephone conversation.”
“I didn’t hear any names.”
“Is that mentioned explicitly in your signed statement from three years ago?” He’d raised his eyebrows ever so slightly.
“Don’t tell me you haven’t read that statement. And—”
“So a direct assertion of Moran’s guilt would not contradict your earlier testimony.”
“You want me to perjure myself.”
He looked at her with pitying eyes. She wanted to scream. “You asked me for help. I’m telling you how to help yourself. I seem to recall a conversation in which you accused me of sending others to die in the trenches while I kept my hands clean. Now you come to me to request my interference in routine legal proceedings. Whose hands will you dirty, Dr Watson?”
She unclenched her teeth to reply. “You can’t want him to go free. You of all people—”
“I?”
“I wasn’t the only one with a sister, Mycroft!”
Too far, surely. She thought he would have to react. Instead he sighed as though he found all this unutterably wearisome. “The moment it suits my purposes to have Sebastian Moran put safely away, you may be assured I will exert myself to do so. Just now I find him more useful as a free man.”
“But why?”
“Because my grasp of the facts far exceeds your own. You may do whatever you like. If you choose to testify against him, I won’t prevent you.”
She would not perjure herself. For a moment she wanted to—God, how she wanted to—but she knew she’d never be able to stomach it. Lestrade would know, and he’d never let it stand; and even if he did, he would still know, and that would be more than she could take.
Her hand was shaking. Mycroft had already turned back to his paperwork. “No,” she said. He looked up without much interest. “You can do something. I know you can. You said as much three years ago, but you wouldn’t make a move until she’d torn London wide open and neither of us could stay, and by then it was too late. People died. Sherlock died, Mycroft.”
“And you blame me for that.” He laid that on the desk between them as a flat statement of fact.
Jo had to think about it. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I’m done blaming you, or myself, or even her, but Moran I can blame. Do something. Please.”
He gave her an assessing look, and then he opened his desk drawer. She couldn’t see what was inside. “Once again, Dr Watson, I’m afraid I must lay this at your door. If you won’t lie to the police, perhaps you’ll accept a more active role.” Then he took out her gun and set it on the desk.
She stared down at it. It was hers, she was quite certain; she still knew every scratch in that glossy surface. “You’ve kept that in your drawer all this time?”
“Oh, no,” he said. “But I had—let us say a suspicion—it might be useful today. Moran’s medical records are on their way to Scotland Yard as we speak. I doubt he will remain there for long. What happens when he walks out those doors is entirely up to you.”
“You bastard,” she said calmly.
His eyes glinted. “I see by your hand you don’t mind.”
She reached for the gun, and her fingers were perfectly steady. They closed about the familiar handle and stilled.
“It’s in excellent repair,” he offered.
“I’m sure. But what’s in it for you? If Moran free is better than Moran imprisoned, what use is Moran dead?”
“Moran himself is immaterial. Now, if you don’t mind, I do have matters of rather more importance to attend to. You have my offer. Take it, Dr Watson, or leave it.”
She left his office with a comfortable weight at her hip.
***
Jo lay awake that night and thought about Sonia Ginzberg and Sherlock Holmes. She thought about Jefferson Hope, she thought about the way it had felt to level her gun at Phil Sutton, and then she rang her sister.
“Three in the morning,” Harry said in a voice fuzzy with sleep. “What d’you want?”
“Remember when you phoned me the week before Christmas?”
Harry’d been up north on business, all alone in a hotel room with a bottle of very expensive Scotch. “Yes. Jo, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing, yet.”
Sleepiness had given way to alarm. “Are you at home?”
“You told me afterward you never drank a drop.”
“I didn’t. Jo, what is it? I can be there in twenty minutes.”
“No, I’m fine. Really I’m fine. It’s just—you wanted it. I could hear how badly. How do you move on from that?”
Harry went quiet. “You can’t make a life out of wants, Jo,” she said at last. “And it doesn’t help to judge yourself for them, either. You just accept them. The important part is what you do.”
Ginzberg had said something very like that, Jo remembered. Perhaps it was time to weigh the advice by its worth, not by its source.
When morning came, she locked the gun in her bedside table and got ready for work.
Lestrade rang later that week to break the news, but by then she’d talked herself into accepting it. Moran had been right; they had his record, the word of a dead woman, and what bits and pieces Scotland Yard had scraped together, and what kind of proof was that against hard medical evidence? Sherlock had been wrong before. Surely it was some sort of betrayal not to back her now, but no-one could spin a brilliant and rational explanation out of ash.
So Jo sat back and watched as the Yard faltered, and failed, and let him go.
***
Life goes on, she thought; death, too. She’d seen more than her share on the battlefield, but even a humble GP had to face it now and then.
“It’s done,” she said to Dr Narita, her pet oncologist at Barts. “Sorry to call you in for nothing.”
“That fast?” He looked at his watch. “How long ago?”
“Barely half an hour.” She let herself crack a yawn. It was late, and Mr Harrow would forgive her lack of decorum. She’d liked him. “He just slipped off.”
Narita nodded. “Happens like that, sometimes. You dig in for the long haul, everyone braces for the pain and the waiting, and then it’s done before you know it. I did think he’d have a few weeks left, at least. Did his daughter make it in?”
“She’s three hours away.”
“Pity. They were close.”
“It’s just as well. He didn’t want her to see it. He told me so just last week.” He frowned at her, and she managed a tired smile. “He went out on his own terms, or as near to it as anyone can. You can’t ask for much more than that.” She imagined herself at eighty-three, slipping away in a hospital bed, and wondered who’d be sitting beside her. It was an easy scenario to entertain. She thought back a few years and tried to remember how she’d have defined her own terms, back then. Funny how quickly expectations changed.
Narita was still watching her. Was that concern or something else? Maybe she’d let her thoughts show on her face. Can’t have that, Jo. “All right, I’m off. There’s paperwork.”
“You could finish that tomorrow,” he suggested. “There’s no rush. Who’s the pathologist on duty? Hooper or Milverton?”
She blinked. “No idea.” Neither of them, at a guess, given the hour. And how should she know? She ought to look in on Molly more often. “It’s fine. I’ll just take it with me. I’ve left some work back at the clinic anyhow, might as well finish up.”
“Good night, Watson.”
She nodded at his back when he turned toward his office, then took the chart from the charge nurse on duty. Death and paperwork, two certainties in medicine and the army both.
The clinic was deserted when she got back. Sarah must have just locked up. Jo switched the lights back on and retreated to the consulting room where she’d left her briefcase, intent on reducing the mound of charting she’d started to accumulate. Halfway through, a knock startled her out of the methodical rhythm.
“Not seeing anyone just now,” she called, and hadn’t she locked the front door behind her? But this door had already opened, and two men were standing over her desk.
“Dr Watson?” said the first, though something in his inflection told her it wasn’t really a question.
“Yes.” Her voice sounded natural, at least to her ears, but her heart was pounding slow and strong, and every instinct she had was standing at attention. “It’s out of hours.”
They were unimpressed. “We need you to come with us.”
She stood to her full height, which came to a little less than five and a half feet. She had to tilt her head back to meet their eyes. “And why should I do that?”
“We’ve been authorised to use physical force if you make it necessary.”
Wrong answer. “Authorised by who, exactly?”
They didn’t answer. She looked at the phone on her desk, then smiled when one of them started forward in response. All right, then, if that was the way it had to be. “Lead on,” she said pleasantly. She moved for her coat, which hung near the door.
They fell in beside her, and she flexed her left hand experimentally. The nearest of them must have noticed, because he grabbed for her wrist. This was just the signal she needed. The swivel stool she used for exams was just beside the desk. It was waist high, easy enough to grab with both hands and swing up and around before either of them realised what she was about. Better if it had been a bit heavier on the far end, of course, but when she put all her weight behind it it made a satisfactory sort of cudgel. One blow to the head and the first man was down.
The next came at her without pause—not so slow on the uptake, this one—and she shoved the stool at him feet-first, which gave her just enough time to reach into the drawer beside her. They’d made a mistake coming for her here. The outer office, now, that would have been a good spot for an ambush, the detached part of her reflected, while the part of her receiving a businesslike tackle from fifteen stone of irritated hit-man was busy aiming a bare needle at the thick muscle of his neck. She went down hard under him, but she had at least the presence of mind to depress the plunger.
“That’s 3 mg of epinephrine,” she gasped into his ear before he could cut her off, and suddenly he was paying her an exquisite level of attention. “In a few seconds your blood pressure will skyrocket. You’ll recognise that because of the pounding headache and the pressure in your chest. A minute or two after that you’ll lose consciousness. I could tell you the next few steps, or we could just skip to the part where you go into cardiac arrest.”
He released her and backed off, which was much better. Jo sat up and rubbed the lump already forming on the back of her head. That hadn’t been an easy fall.
He was already short of breath. “Can—”
“I can try to counteract it, yes,” she said calmly. “But first you’re going to take hand me the pistol you’re carrying—nicely, now—and if you try anything I’ll be quite happy to sit and watch you expire.”
“That won’t be necessary,” said a cool voice from the doorway. Jo looked up to see Mycroft’s polished assistant standing there like something out of another life. She raised an eyebrow as she surveyed the scene. “This is what comes of shoddy hiring practises. What is the man thinking?”
“Who—Mycroft? But—”
“Quite,” she said. “Now suppose you counteract that injection so we can be on our way.”
Jo glanced at the man who’d just rolled off her. His face had gone purple, and he was clutching his chest, staring at her with plaintive eyes. “No need.”
“He’s clearly in distress.”
“The power of suggestion,” Jo said. She of all people knew better than to underestimate psychosomatic symptoms. “That wasn’t epinephrine—it was a flu vaccine. Have you had one before? Deep breaths. Ever had a reaction? No? You’ll be fine.”
Jo grabbed for the cane resting beside the coat-rack and used it to lever herself to her feet. She tested her bad leg and found it would hold, and Anthea gave her a brilliant smile. “I have a car waiting out front.”
“Where are we going?”
“Baker Street.”
“Explanations on the way?”
“When we get there.”
It would do. “All right,” Jo said. “Wasn’t so difficult, was it?” she said over her shoulder, and they left Mycroft’s hired guns in two massive heaps behind them.
There were, in fact, two cars waiting at the kerb. One was empty. The other had a driver and the engine running, and Anthea held the door for Jo to step inside. “What, you weren’t with them?”
“I would not have taken ‘safe and immediate delivery at any cost’ to mean ‘physical intimidation as a first resort’, but the directive wasn’t given to me.”
“But Mycroft—”
“Is managing his own affairs at the moment,” Anthea said. She was shockingly talkative tonight. “I have other concerns.”
“So why are you—”
“For old times’ sake. And because things are just about to get interesting.”
“But what—”
“As I said: when we get to Baker Street.” She’d pulled out a small tablet and was already tapping away, which was at least familiar. Jo swallowed a dozen other questions, tucked her cold hands under her arms, and sat back to wait.
When they arrived, there was a light on upstairs, and she could see the outlines of two people moving behind the curtains. Jo hesitated at the door, mental alarms going off at full volume.
Anthea shouldered past her and unlocked the door, clutching a key-ring Jo had never seen before. Jo choked back a protest. It was far too late to complain about the invasion of her privacy.
There was only one person in the sitting room by the time they made it there, though she could hear someone—Savitri?—rattling around in the next room. Meanwhile, Mycroft Holmes was seated on the couch, umbrella tap tapping against his leg. He lifted his eyebrows at them.
“Your men are intact,” Anthea said lightly. Her eyes shot to Jo. “Mostly.”
“I’m glad to hear it. To what do I owe the pleasure?” He was being cautious, and not of Jo, she realised. Of Anthea, then? Exactly what had become of his covert little dominion?
“Our areas of interest still intersect,” Anthea said. She sounded bored. “This falls between them.”
“I see. Peters tipped you off, I take it.”
She shrugged. “Old habits.”
“Fascinating as this is,” Jo broke in, “I’d really like to know what you’re both doing here. And what have you done with our things?” She’d run an eye over the sitting room and discovered the sudden and unsettling absence of several stacks of books she’d come to think of as permanent, the antique clock missing from its usual place on the mantle, Savitri’s woven throw gone from its perch on the back of the armchair—all Savitri’s things, not Jo’s, she realised. “What’s going on?”
“Two hours ago, Ronald Adair was shot through his office window,” Mycroft said. “It was a head shot at over a hundred metres. His death was pronounced at the scene.”
Well, at least she knew for certain he’d been lying about his left hand. I might have prevented it; but even as the thought this, she knew she could never have taken that shot. Nor would she have been in the right if she had done. “Adair. I know that name. Was he the judge in Owens’ trial?”
“Precisely. The significance of the murder method will not have escaped you.” His eyes went to the windows. “I hope you will not take it amiss if I suggest the immediate purchase of some blackout curtains.”
“But that’s so obvious. Why would he—”
“Obvious, yes,” Mycroft agreed. “Blatant, in fact. And also very public.” He smiled in clear satisfaction. “Almost a declaration, you might say, and not one likely to escape the notice of any interested parties, whether at home or abroad.”
“I don’t understand,” Jo began, and was interrupted when Savitri came in, a half-empty packing box in her arms. She smiled at Jo with an odd mix of reluctance and assurance. “Wait, what—”
“I’m being reassigned,” Savitri said. “Quite soon.”
Jo opened her mouth, then closed it with a snap.
Mycroft was examining his fingernails. “I thought a bare minimum of warning might be appreciated before this very comfortable arrangement was dissolved.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense! Moran’s killed again and she’s going away? I don’t want—”
“Orders,” Savitri said, shrugging. “It’s been nice, being in the same place for more than a month or two, but I knew it wouldn’t last.”
Jo turned on Mycroft, confusion crumbling under the weight of her anger. “What gives you the right to storm into my home”
“I didn’t orchestrate this,” he said mildly. “Events are moving quite out of my control. Though not, I trust, entirely beyond my influence. You will be assigned a more substantial security detail, and Ms Naidu will remain here until her next assignment has been arranged.”
Savitri crossed to the kitchen, leaving Jo alone and defenceless. She stared between Mycroft and his—no longer assistant, judging by their conversation. Add that to the mounting list of things she didn’t understand. “But why do you care?” she cried. “Three years and you can’t just let it alone? What’s so important about me?”
“I assure you, Dr Watson, I’m as much in the dark as you are on that particular matter, but important you evidently are.”
“I’ve never been important to Moriarty. Not to Moran, not to Kempe, not to any of them.”
“Reflect on that, if you would.” He stood and looked to Anthea. “We should co-ordinate our efforts on this.”
“I suppose we might as well.”
He gestured to the door with a sweep of one arm. “After you.”
“What efforts?” Jo demanded. “You can’t just keep me in the dark like this.”
“No,” he agreed, “not for very much longer.” His mouth quirked. “Welcome back, Dr Watson.”
Jo stood alone in the sitting room and listened to the fall of their feet on the stairs. From the kitchen, she could hear the clatter of dishes as Savitri continued packing with practised efficiency.
When it was quiet again, she sank down into her chair. The ache in her leg had faded to background noise, and her spine sat a little straighter than it had just an hour before. Whether for good or ill, Jo didn’t claim to know, but something vital had changed in the London air.
Welcome back.
Fin (for now)
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le_prince_lutin a line--she's done seriously lovely work here.
They’ve got a double room in a quaint, comfortable hotel nestled in the Swiss Alps. The window is wide open to a cool evening breeze, and the beds are beautifully soft. Jo’s gun rests on the night-stand.
Sherlock has just come from the shower. Her hair is dark and wet against the fluffy white towels, and Jo relaxes into this comfortable domesticity, sleepy and content.
“What tomorrow?” Jo asks.
Sherlock gives her a bland look. “I thought we’d go hiking.”
Jo glances down at the tall backpacks that lie near the door. They look convincingly worn, as though Sherlock hadn’t purchased them a few days ago along with the hardy boots and jackets that make up the rest of their fugitives’ costume, as though the two women are indeed a pair of ramblers on holiday. “All right.”
Sherlock’s mouth twitches. She probably expected some token protest. “How’s the leg?”
“Just fine, thanks.” She’s been following Jo’s movements with irritating care, and Jo knows what she’s really asking. And how quickly can you run for your life if they’ve followed us from Bern? Jo leans back into the mattress, gazing up at the chequered curtains blowing across her bed. “Ginzberg wanted me to kill you.”
She can’t see Sherlock’s face. Jo thinks that might have been an unconscious choice on her own part.
“How did she plan to achieve that?” Jo’s never been so grateful for Sherlock’s cool, analytical approach.
“She never said, exactly,” Jo informs the cream-coloured ceiling. “Prime me to a hair-trigger, I suppose. She managed that much with Moran’s help. She said I’d be a moral liability. I suppose she’d just have pointed me in the right direction: civilians, the Yard, you.”
“That’s the most idiotic plan I’ve ever heard.”
“Is it? I nearly killed my ex-boyfriend, remember.”
“You thought he was with Moriarty.”
“I was wrong.”
“It wouldn’t have been a loss to the world. Sutton is an arse.”
“But nobody died because of him. You—” Sherlock has moved to stand over her bed, and Jo meets her eyes at last. “Harry’d never have been shot if you’d backed off from Moriarty. Paul Griffiths, Roberta Anderson, Charles Harris: they’d all still be alive.”
“And you blame me for that?”
“No,” Jo says honestly. “I don’t.”
“And if you did blame me, would you have killed me for it? To stop another death? To stop Harry’s?”
“I’ve killed before.” And Sherlock hasn’t. Jo is almost certain of that. One of the precious few things she knows that Sherlock doesn’t: what it’s like to look at a man and end him. Jo shivers. Sherlock is looking down at her, hair still dripping, eyes clear and curious. Jo imagines looking at this woman and ending her. “No. I wouldn’t. Not—not like that. If you were the one pulling the trigger, yes. I think.” There was a time not so long ago when Jo knew how to be decisive. She’s lost some of that surety. Suppose you tell me, Dr Watson, what it takes to make you kill a man.
She’s afraid she’s handled this wrong, that this will shatter the firm and unquestioned peace they’ve forged since Jo tried to leave her and was driven right back, but Sherlock is looking at her as though she’s a complete idiot. That shouldn’t make her feel better, but of course it does.
“Did it never occur to you that Sonia Ginzberg was a liar?”
Jo stares up at her. “I—”
“The woman manipulated you into becoming her patient, spent months analysing you, and then went to great effort to dismantle you, Joanna. You don’t honestly think she was above preying on your overdeveloped sense of culpability.”
“It wasn’t all lies. She helped me, Sherlock.”
“She did her best to drive you over the edge. Why would she start telling the truth just because you’d found her out? I realise the logical approach goes against your nature, but you might at least make an attempt.” Sherlock’s expression has turned introspective. “No, it won’t hold up. As a thought experiment, however, it is intriguing. My death, to take me out of the game—but you wouldn’t have done it yourself.”
“No.” She needs to allow herself that much certainty. Ginzberg may have shaken her to the bones, but Jo won’t let herself crack. “Not like that, Sherlock.”
Sherlock smiles. It’s not the brilliant, brittle one of joy in the chase or the bright, winning one she uses on unsuspecting witnesses. This one goes straight to her eyes, and Jo thinks, That is all mine. “We’ll have to make certain the choice is never relevant, won’t we?”
“False dichotomy, anyway.” Jo swings her bare feet up into the bed and speaks through a yawn, exhaustion catching up to her. “S’not a choice between your death and anyone else’s.”
Sherlock says something in reply, but Jo won’t remember it in the morning. The room is quiet, and soon she drifts off to sleep.
Chapter Four: A Step Upon the Stair
It was a Friday night in early January. Joanna had just finished a long shift at the clinic, and she came home to find Savitri intent on her computer. She got no more than an abstracted wave as she shrugged off her coat, which meant work. Something sensitive, no doubt. Jo hoped she wouldn’t learn the details in tomorrow’s headlines.
It had been a long week, the sort that left you drained without any associated sense of accomplishment. Jo hated that. Her neck and shoulders were tense from too many hours at a desk, she’d resorted to the cane more days than not, and her hand tremor was back for no good reason at all.
Which left only one question: tea, wine, or something that would smart as it went down? She was saved the decision when her mobile started buzzing. She glanced at the screen and was smiling even as she hit Accept. “Detective Inspector, I believe this is what’s known among the younger generation as a ‘booty call’.”
Savitri glanced up from her laptop, amused. Lestrade’s voice was dry to the point of flatness, but Jo put that down to poor reception. “Sorry to disappoint. I just wanted—”
“We haven’t spoken in a month and a half and now you ring at this hour on a weekend? You can’t tell me you have noble intentions. Give me twenty minutes.”
“Joanna.” This stopped her in her tracks. He hadn’t called her that in almost two years. “Tuesday afternoon, we had an anonymous tip.”
“And?” Her throat was dry.
“And it paid off. We’ve got Sebastian Moran in custody now.”
She swallowed. “What are you charging him with?”
“Three counts of homicide, so far. Paul Griffiths and Roberta Anderson—I’m sure you remember them—and another case, a shooting in Bath a few years back. There’s a money trail on that one. We can link it straight to Moriarty.”
“And to Moran?”
“Well, there’s the rub. Everything we have on him is circumstantial. But I’m what you’d call cautiously optimistic.”
She didn’t—couldn’t—say anything, just stood there in the middle of the sitting room until Savitri started looking concerned. “Good,” Jo said inanely. “That’s good. Do you need—”
“You never had a thing to do with him,” he said at once. “We won’t need you. Unless you’ve remembered something else…?”
“Sherlock gave me his name,” she said. “She told me it was him.”
“Which won’t do us any good in court without her evidence to back it up. Don’t worry, though. We’ve got months to sort things out before this comes to trial.”
“Right,” Jo said. “Right. That’s fine, then.” She rubbed her hand up and down her thigh, massaging the sore muscle underneath, and she tried to think. “Has anyone told his sister?”
“What do you know about her?”
“That she exists, which you told me. And—I met her once.”
“Jo.” She tried to read either exasperation or concern in that, but she came up dry. He just sounded tired. “This isn’t your job. You’re not Sherlock.”
All this time, and that name still twisted something in her gut. “You don’t need to tell me that.”
“So leave it to us. Last thing I need—the very last thing—is you running about in back alleys while I’ve got an investigation on.”
That hardly described her visit to Sabine Moran, but she conceded the point. “All right. I promise. Just don’t bollocks this up.”
“I don’t need you to tell me how to do my job.”
“I know. I’m sorry. You managed Owens and Kempe without me, and I was glad to see them put away—but Moran shot Harry.” The numb shock had passed, and now the words came tumbling out. “He killed two people in my place and then he shot my sister.”
“I remember.”
“I want to see him, Lestrade.” She was fairly certain she hadn’t meant to say that. “I want to see him.”
“Are you out of your mind?” he demanded. “I said leave it to us! The best thing you can do is sit back and wait.”
“Like hell.”
“Joanna, fair warning’s all I can give you. I’ll phone you when there’s more news.” And he hung up.
She laid the phone down and looked up at Savitri, who had got to her feet by then and was watching Jo with a mixture of alarm and cool, professional assessment. It was a rare reminder of what this woman did for a living.
She smiled. Judging by Savitri’s stance, it was not reassuring.
“I want you to talk to your boss,” Jo said. “I need a favour.”
It wasn’t as though she liked the idea of running up a debt with Mycroft Holmes, but she had to admit the man got results. Early Monday morning she was ushered into a holding cell. There were no witnesses, and she’d been promised privacy from the Met’s surveillance. It was understood that both the cell’s occupants would emerge in the same physical condition as they’d entered it, but beyond that she’d been given no restrictions.
She almost regretted that. The urgent fury that had overtaken her at Lestrade’s news had been far too like the unthinking certainty that had once led her to draw a gun on an unarmed man. Phil Sutton hadn’t had a thing to do with Moriarty, and Sherlock had been there to tell her so, but in this case Jo thought it was just as well she no longer had the gun.
He sat with his arms folded, hands tucked away under his elbows in a pose that would have seemed defensive if he hadn’t had the trick of owning whatever space he was in. Despite a gaunt face scored with lines of pain and hard use, he was clean-shaven and neat, his grey and thinning hair cropped close. There was something of his sister in the jaw and aggressive nose. His blue eyes were certainly a family trait. They tracked her with calm curiosity, lingering on the cane and the tremor. He had a hunter’s eyes, Jo thought. She’d seen that look before. In the mirror, most frequently.
She suppressed a shudder and limped stiffly to sit down opposite him. The interrogation table between them was just a formality, a prop demanded by procedure. There were no real buffers here. This was the end of it all.
“Do you know who I am?” she asked, distantly glad that she could keep an even tone.
“Dr Watson, I presume. You’re the reason I’m here.”
“Am I?” Was he going to confess?
“I hear you’ve been telling the police all about me,” he said. “You’ve got quite a lot to say about a man you’ve never met.”
“I met your sister,” Jo said. “She’s told me all about you.”
“I doubt it. Never did meet yours, did I?”
“Depends on your definition, I suppose.”
He smiled. “I imagine it does. Come to gloat, have you? They won’t convict me.”
“We’ve got you, Moran.”
“You have my military record and the word of Sherlock Holmes,” he said, “and I don’t see her taking the witness stand.” His mouth curled, and he looked at Jo as though they were sharing an excellent joke.
She’d spent years swallowing rage and grief in the best military tradition, but now they both came boiling up. “Don’t say her name,” she hissed. “Don’t you dare.”
“Oh, I dare. She can’t touch me.”
“She did all she needed to. It’s been a long time since you’ve had Moriarty at your back. Your ground support’s been routed, Colonel. It’s time to surrender. How many other bodies do you think they’ll turn up, now they’re really looking?”
“Sonia Ginzberg’s,” he said. “How about hers?”
With time, that accusation had lost its edge. She ignored it. “Three murders so far. I’ll see they charge you for Sherlock’s, too.”
He laughed. Had she said something funny? “You’re barking up the wrong tree there, Watson, if you think they’ll make that case. I know for a fact they never pulled a bullet out of her. That’s one body they’ll never turn up.” She frowned in confusion, and those eyes grew keener. “Or don’t you know?”
“Know what?” Jo said sharply. “Know what Jim Ryder did to her? Of course I do. But Mycroft’s people spotted you in Bern, you know. You were there. Even if they can’t prove you made it to the Falls—”
“Good God,” he said. “You really don’t know, do you? What do think I’ve been doing since then?”
“Running. And shooting more people, I expect.”
He was still smiling. “Watson, this is the best thing I’ve heard in years. Are you ever in for it. You’re dead wrong. About everything, not least my chances of walking away from this scot-free.”
“I doubt it,” she said. He was trying to twist her, to catch her off guard, but she wouldn’t let him. Oh, to have met him with a gun in her hand. Pity the days of duelling were over; she’d love to find out which of them was the better shot at fifty paces. “We have you.”
“You really don’t. I haven’t shot a man since I was discharged.” She laughed. He sneered right back. “Don’t believe me, Doctor?” He lifted both his hands and laid them flat on the table.
She’d read enough of his service record to know it had been heavily abridged before it arrived in her hands, but the medical details had been even barer of real data than the rest. There’d been no x-rays, no photographs, no surgeon’s reports, and she hadn’t known the nature of his wound. Now it was all too apparent. The index and middle finger of his right hand had been shorn right off, and all that remained of the other fingers was a stub ending at the first knuckle. The left was in somewhat better condition, but even there she saw a knot of scar tissue, and the fingers were bent at anatomically unlikely angles.
“What’s your diagnosis?” The dismay must have been plain on her face, because he was watching her with all the satisfaction of a man who’d hit his mark. “Munitions explosion. You know, all they fed the Op Granby troops was chicken in brown sauce. Haven’t eaten it since. Just after it happened, I remember looking down at these and thinking, Chicken in brown sauce, that’s just it…you remember the smell, Watson.”
She sucked in air. “You could still fire.”
He raised his right hand and waggled the stubs at her. “My dominant, this one. And the left’s a bloody mess, too.”
“That doesn’t mean you couldn’t. It’s not proof.”
“These bumbling Yarders have just received copies of my medical records at discharge, complete with x-rays that make my left phalanges look like matchsticks and a surgeon’s prognosis saying I’ll never fire a weapon again. Griffiths was shot through his office window from across a street. With a handgun.” He looked down at his hands, flexing them carefully. Then he looked back up at her. “Could you have done it with these, Major?”
He knew about Jefferson Hope, oh yes. He had killed Paul Griffiths and Roberta Anderson, and he’d tried to kill Harry and had a hand in Sherlock’s death. She wouldn’t let him get out of it. “I’ve seen more miraculous recoveries in my time. With your eye, with practise and therapy and effort, your left hand could still make that shot.”
Moran leant in. His breath smelled of toothpaste, fresh and clean, and his eyes were twin bayonets. “As one gimp to another, Watson, how’s it feel when someone tells you you could get over it if you’d just try harder?”
She hit him. Not well, and not nearly hard enough. She might have done more damage if she’d angled her fist better, and the leverage from across the table was all wrong, but his chair rocked back with a satisfying clang.
He was laughing even before he’d uncrossed his eyes. “I almost wish I planned to stick around, Watson!” he shouted as she turned her back. “You’ve got no bloody idea what’s headed your way.”
She slammed the door behind her. Her hand was going to bruise, but it was her leg that hurt.
She went straight from there to Holmes’ office. The man hadn’t warned her. He should have warned her.
Mycroft smiled—actually smiled!—as she came in. Physically, he hadn’t changed much since she’d last seen him. Hair a little thinner, she thought. “How can I be of service?”
“He’s lying,” she said without preamble. He didn’t bother to pretend at confusion. “You know he’s lying. Those x-rays are forged, or he recovered better than expected, or something, and he killed them, but he’s going to get off. You can stop it happening.”
“So can you.”
“I can?” She laughed, a short huff of disbelief. “What sort of pull do you imagine I’ve got?”
“I don’t mean political influence. Go to Detective Inspector Lestrade and tell him to put you on the stand. Tell him exactly what Sonia Ginzberg said about Sebastian Moran. Tell him which names you overheard during that telephone conversation.”
“I didn’t hear any names.”
“Is that mentioned explicitly in your signed statement from three years ago?” He’d raised his eyebrows ever so slightly.
“Don’t tell me you haven’t read that statement. And—”
“So a direct assertion of Moran’s guilt would not contradict your earlier testimony.”
“You want me to perjure myself.”
He looked at her with pitying eyes. She wanted to scream. “You asked me for help. I’m telling you how to help yourself. I seem to recall a conversation in which you accused me of sending others to die in the trenches while I kept my hands clean. Now you come to me to request my interference in routine legal proceedings. Whose hands will you dirty, Dr Watson?”
She unclenched her teeth to reply. “You can’t want him to go free. You of all people—”
“I?”
“I wasn’t the only one with a sister, Mycroft!”
Too far, surely. She thought he would have to react. Instead he sighed as though he found all this unutterably wearisome. “The moment it suits my purposes to have Sebastian Moran put safely away, you may be assured I will exert myself to do so. Just now I find him more useful as a free man.”
“But why?”
“Because my grasp of the facts far exceeds your own. You may do whatever you like. If you choose to testify against him, I won’t prevent you.”
She would not perjure herself. For a moment she wanted to—God, how she wanted to—but she knew she’d never be able to stomach it. Lestrade would know, and he’d never let it stand; and even if he did, he would still know, and that would be more than she could take.
Her hand was shaking. Mycroft had already turned back to his paperwork. “No,” she said. He looked up without much interest. “You can do something. I know you can. You said as much three years ago, but you wouldn’t make a move until she’d torn London wide open and neither of us could stay, and by then it was too late. People died. Sherlock died, Mycroft.”
“And you blame me for that.” He laid that on the desk between them as a flat statement of fact.
Jo had to think about it. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I’m done blaming you, or myself, or even her, but Moran I can blame. Do something. Please.”
He gave her an assessing look, and then he opened his desk drawer. She couldn’t see what was inside. “Once again, Dr Watson, I’m afraid I must lay this at your door. If you won’t lie to the police, perhaps you’ll accept a more active role.” Then he took out her gun and set it on the desk.
She stared down at it. It was hers, she was quite certain; she still knew every scratch in that glossy surface. “You’ve kept that in your drawer all this time?”
“Oh, no,” he said. “But I had—let us say a suspicion—it might be useful today. Moran’s medical records are on their way to Scotland Yard as we speak. I doubt he will remain there for long. What happens when he walks out those doors is entirely up to you.”
“You bastard,” she said calmly.
His eyes glinted. “I see by your hand you don’t mind.”
She reached for the gun, and her fingers were perfectly steady. They closed about the familiar handle and stilled.
“It’s in excellent repair,” he offered.
“I’m sure. But what’s in it for you? If Moran free is better than Moran imprisoned, what use is Moran dead?”
“Moran himself is immaterial. Now, if you don’t mind, I do have matters of rather more importance to attend to. You have my offer. Take it, Dr Watson, or leave it.”
She left his office with a comfortable weight at her hip.
Jo lay awake that night and thought about Sonia Ginzberg and Sherlock Holmes. She thought about Jefferson Hope, she thought about the way it had felt to level her gun at Phil Sutton, and then she rang her sister.
“Three in the morning,” Harry said in a voice fuzzy with sleep. “What d’you want?”
“Remember when you phoned me the week before Christmas?”
Harry’d been up north on business, all alone in a hotel room with a bottle of very expensive Scotch. “Yes. Jo, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing, yet.”
Sleepiness had given way to alarm. “Are you at home?”
“You told me afterward you never drank a drop.”
“I didn’t. Jo, what is it? I can be there in twenty minutes.”
“No, I’m fine. Really I’m fine. It’s just—you wanted it. I could hear how badly. How do you move on from that?”
Harry went quiet. “You can’t make a life out of wants, Jo,” she said at last. “And it doesn’t help to judge yourself for them, either. You just accept them. The important part is what you do.”
Ginzberg had said something very like that, Jo remembered. Perhaps it was time to weigh the advice by its worth, not by its source.
When morning came, she locked the gun in her bedside table and got ready for work.
Lestrade rang later that week to break the news, but by then she’d talked herself into accepting it. Moran had been right; they had his record, the word of a dead woman, and what bits and pieces Scotland Yard had scraped together, and what kind of proof was that against hard medical evidence? Sherlock had been wrong before. Surely it was some sort of betrayal not to back her now, but no-one could spin a brilliant and rational explanation out of ash.
So Jo sat back and watched as the Yard faltered, and failed, and let him go.
Life goes on, she thought; death, too. She’d seen more than her share on the battlefield, but even a humble GP had to face it now and then.
“It’s done,” she said to Dr Narita, her pet oncologist at Barts. “Sorry to call you in for nothing.”
“That fast?” He looked at his watch. “How long ago?”
“Barely half an hour.” She let herself crack a yawn. It was late, and Mr Harrow would forgive her lack of decorum. She’d liked him. “He just slipped off.”
Narita nodded. “Happens like that, sometimes. You dig in for the long haul, everyone braces for the pain and the waiting, and then it’s done before you know it. I did think he’d have a few weeks left, at least. Did his daughter make it in?”
“She’s three hours away.”
“Pity. They were close.”
“It’s just as well. He didn’t want her to see it. He told me so just last week.” He frowned at her, and she managed a tired smile. “He went out on his own terms, or as near to it as anyone can. You can’t ask for much more than that.” She imagined herself at eighty-three, slipping away in a hospital bed, and wondered who’d be sitting beside her. It was an easy scenario to entertain. She thought back a few years and tried to remember how she’d have defined her own terms, back then. Funny how quickly expectations changed.
Narita was still watching her. Was that concern or something else? Maybe she’d let her thoughts show on her face. Can’t have that, Jo. “All right, I’m off. There’s paperwork.”
“You could finish that tomorrow,” he suggested. “There’s no rush. Who’s the pathologist on duty? Hooper or Milverton?”
She blinked. “No idea.” Neither of them, at a guess, given the hour. And how should she know? She ought to look in on Molly more often. “It’s fine. I’ll just take it with me. I’ve left some work back at the clinic anyhow, might as well finish up.”
“Good night, Watson.”
She nodded at his back when he turned toward his office, then took the chart from the charge nurse on duty. Death and paperwork, two certainties in medicine and the army both.
The clinic was deserted when she got back. Sarah must have just locked up. Jo switched the lights back on and retreated to the consulting room where she’d left her briefcase, intent on reducing the mound of charting she’d started to accumulate. Halfway through, a knock startled her out of the methodical rhythm.
“Not seeing anyone just now,” she called, and hadn’t she locked the front door behind her? But this door had already opened, and two men were standing over her desk.
“Dr Watson?” said the first, though something in his inflection told her it wasn’t really a question.
“Yes.” Her voice sounded natural, at least to her ears, but her heart was pounding slow and strong, and every instinct she had was standing at attention. “It’s out of hours.”
They were unimpressed. “We need you to come with us.”
She stood to her full height, which came to a little less than five and a half feet. She had to tilt her head back to meet their eyes. “And why should I do that?”
“We’ve been authorised to use physical force if you make it necessary.”
Wrong answer. “Authorised by who, exactly?”
They didn’t answer. She looked at the phone on her desk, then smiled when one of them started forward in response. All right, then, if that was the way it had to be. “Lead on,” she said pleasantly. She moved for her coat, which hung near the door.
They fell in beside her, and she flexed her left hand experimentally. The nearest of them must have noticed, because he grabbed for her wrist. This was just the signal she needed. The swivel stool she used for exams was just beside the desk. It was waist high, easy enough to grab with both hands and swing up and around before either of them realised what she was about. Better if it had been a bit heavier on the far end, of course, but when she put all her weight behind it it made a satisfactory sort of cudgel. One blow to the head and the first man was down.
The next came at her without pause—not so slow on the uptake, this one—and she shoved the stool at him feet-first, which gave her just enough time to reach into the drawer beside her. They’d made a mistake coming for her here. The outer office, now, that would have been a good spot for an ambush, the detached part of her reflected, while the part of her receiving a businesslike tackle from fifteen stone of irritated hit-man was busy aiming a bare needle at the thick muscle of his neck. She went down hard under him, but she had at least the presence of mind to depress the plunger.
“That’s 3 mg of epinephrine,” she gasped into his ear before he could cut her off, and suddenly he was paying her an exquisite level of attention. “In a few seconds your blood pressure will skyrocket. You’ll recognise that because of the pounding headache and the pressure in your chest. A minute or two after that you’ll lose consciousness. I could tell you the next few steps, or we could just skip to the part where you go into cardiac arrest.”
He released her and backed off, which was much better. Jo sat up and rubbed the lump already forming on the back of her head. That hadn’t been an easy fall.
He was already short of breath. “Can—”
“I can try to counteract it, yes,” she said calmly. “But first you’re going to take hand me the pistol you’re carrying—nicely, now—and if you try anything I’ll be quite happy to sit and watch you expire.”
“That won’t be necessary,” said a cool voice from the doorway. Jo looked up to see Mycroft’s polished assistant standing there like something out of another life. She raised an eyebrow as she surveyed the scene. “This is what comes of shoddy hiring practises. What is the man thinking?”
“Who—Mycroft? But—”
“Quite,” she said. “Now suppose you counteract that injection so we can be on our way.”
Jo glanced at the man who’d just rolled off her. His face had gone purple, and he was clutching his chest, staring at her with plaintive eyes. “No need.”
“He’s clearly in distress.”
“The power of suggestion,” Jo said. She of all people knew better than to underestimate psychosomatic symptoms. “That wasn’t epinephrine—it was a flu vaccine. Have you had one before? Deep breaths. Ever had a reaction? No? You’ll be fine.”
Jo grabbed for the cane resting beside the coat-rack and used it to lever herself to her feet. She tested her bad leg and found it would hold, and Anthea gave her a brilliant smile. “I have a car waiting out front.”
“Where are we going?”
“Baker Street.”
“Explanations on the way?”
“When we get there.”
It would do. “All right,” Jo said. “Wasn’t so difficult, was it?” she said over her shoulder, and they left Mycroft’s hired guns in two massive heaps behind them.
There were, in fact, two cars waiting at the kerb. One was empty. The other had a driver and the engine running, and Anthea held the door for Jo to step inside. “What, you weren’t with them?”
“I would not have taken ‘safe and immediate delivery at any cost’ to mean ‘physical intimidation as a first resort’, but the directive wasn’t given to me.”
“But Mycroft—”
“Is managing his own affairs at the moment,” Anthea said. She was shockingly talkative tonight. “I have other concerns.”
“So why are you—”
“For old times’ sake. And because things are just about to get interesting.”
“But what—”
“As I said: when we get to Baker Street.” She’d pulled out a small tablet and was already tapping away, which was at least familiar. Jo swallowed a dozen other questions, tucked her cold hands under her arms, and sat back to wait.
When they arrived, there was a light on upstairs, and she could see the outlines of two people moving behind the curtains. Jo hesitated at the door, mental alarms going off at full volume.
Anthea shouldered past her and unlocked the door, clutching a key-ring Jo had never seen before. Jo choked back a protest. It was far too late to complain about the invasion of her privacy.
There was only one person in the sitting room by the time they made it there, though she could hear someone—Savitri?—rattling around in the next room. Meanwhile, Mycroft Holmes was seated on the couch, umbrella tap tapping against his leg. He lifted his eyebrows at them.
“Your men are intact,” Anthea said lightly. Her eyes shot to Jo. “Mostly.”
“I’m glad to hear it. To what do I owe the pleasure?” He was being cautious, and not of Jo, she realised. Of Anthea, then? Exactly what had become of his covert little dominion?
“Our areas of interest still intersect,” Anthea said. She sounded bored. “This falls between them.”
“I see. Peters tipped you off, I take it.”
She shrugged. “Old habits.”
“Fascinating as this is,” Jo broke in, “I’d really like to know what you’re both doing here. And what have you done with our things?” She’d run an eye over the sitting room and discovered the sudden and unsettling absence of several stacks of books she’d come to think of as permanent, the antique clock missing from its usual place on the mantle, Savitri’s woven throw gone from its perch on the back of the armchair—all Savitri’s things, not Jo’s, she realised. “What’s going on?”
“Two hours ago, Ronald Adair was shot through his office window,” Mycroft said. “It was a head shot at over a hundred metres. His death was pronounced at the scene.”
Well, at least she knew for certain he’d been lying about his left hand. I might have prevented it; but even as the thought this, she knew she could never have taken that shot. Nor would she have been in the right if she had done. “Adair. I know that name. Was he the judge in Owens’ trial?”
“Precisely. The significance of the murder method will not have escaped you.” His eyes went to the windows. “I hope you will not take it amiss if I suggest the immediate purchase of some blackout curtains.”
“But that’s so obvious. Why would he—”
“Obvious, yes,” Mycroft agreed. “Blatant, in fact. And also very public.” He smiled in clear satisfaction. “Almost a declaration, you might say, and not one likely to escape the notice of any interested parties, whether at home or abroad.”
“I don’t understand,” Jo began, and was interrupted when Savitri came in, a half-empty packing box in her arms. She smiled at Jo with an odd mix of reluctance and assurance. “Wait, what—”
“I’m being reassigned,” Savitri said. “Quite soon.”
Jo opened her mouth, then closed it with a snap.
Mycroft was examining his fingernails. “I thought a bare minimum of warning might be appreciated before this very comfortable arrangement was dissolved.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense! Moran’s killed again and she’s going away? I don’t want—”
“Orders,” Savitri said, shrugging. “It’s been nice, being in the same place for more than a month or two, but I knew it wouldn’t last.”
Jo turned on Mycroft, confusion crumbling under the weight of her anger. “What gives you the right to storm into my home”
“I didn’t orchestrate this,” he said mildly. “Events are moving quite out of my control. Though not, I trust, entirely beyond my influence. You will be assigned a more substantial security detail, and Ms Naidu will remain here until her next assignment has been arranged.”
Savitri crossed to the kitchen, leaving Jo alone and defenceless. She stared between Mycroft and his—no longer assistant, judging by their conversation. Add that to the mounting list of things she didn’t understand. “But why do you care?” she cried. “Three years and you can’t just let it alone? What’s so important about me?”
“I assure you, Dr Watson, I’m as much in the dark as you are on that particular matter, but important you evidently are.”
“I’ve never been important to Moriarty. Not to Moran, not to Kempe, not to any of them.”
“Reflect on that, if you would.” He stood and looked to Anthea. “We should co-ordinate our efforts on this.”
“I suppose we might as well.”
He gestured to the door with a sweep of one arm. “After you.”
“What efforts?” Jo demanded. “You can’t just keep me in the dark like this.”
“No,” he agreed, “not for very much longer.” His mouth quirked. “Welcome back, Dr Watson.”
Jo stood alone in the sitting room and listened to the fall of their feet on the stairs. From the kitchen, she could hear the clatter of dishes as Savitri continued packing with practised efficiency.
When it was quiet again, she sank down into her chair. The ache in her leg had faded to background noise, and her spine sat a little straighter than it had just an hour before. Whether for good or ill, Jo didn’t claim to know, but something vital had changed in the London air.
Welcome back.
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